1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to automatic identification of unticketed reservations stored in a database, which reservations are required to be ticketed according to certain criteria, the invention automatically noticing a reservation-generating entity at least once of the ticketing requirement and canceling the reservation according to certain criteria if a ticket is not issued for the reservation according to the criteria, the invention further being capable of functioning remote from the database and reservation-generating entity.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Certain time-sensitive services which are reserved by one or more reservations entities must be used as of a date certain or else the opportunity of the service provider to benefit from the reservation is forever lost. A particular example can be found in the airline industry where reservations are made by travel agents, flight packages, various booking agents and even an airline itself, the reservations being maintained in a central reservation system which is effectively a database which can be accessed from remotely of the database. The airline in this situation is the service provider and stands to lose appreciable monies if reservations booked into the central reservation system are not ticketed prior to the service to be provided, that is, a particular flight. It is imperative that a reservation which is not going to be ticketed be removed from the central reservation system well before the service, that is the flight, so that the seat can be sold to a user who will actually buy a ticket and sit in the reserved seat.
For various reasons, some passengers abuse reservations systems by making speculative reservations either in their own names or in fictitious names. Often, multiple reservations are made by one person for a given flight with an outcome often being that none of the reservations are actually used. In order to combat such practices by the public, airlines in particular often resort to overbooking of a flight in order to increase the load factor on flights which are ostensibly sold out. Airlines in particular wish to guard against situations wherein a flight is sold-out prior to the day of departure and yet departs with empty seats. In such situations, revenue is forever lost especially in view of the likely fact that customers wishing to buy a seat were turned away since seats were apparently no longer available. In essence, the reduction of no-show factors on sold-out flights or the like increases revenue. Revenue can also be increased on flights which are not sold out by the practice of “flight firming”, that is, periodically checking flight reservations or the like in a central database to determine whether each reservation has been ticketed as of a certain date and time determined according to a given set of criteria. According to these criteria, a notice may be forwarded to the ticketing entity responsible for the reservation and noting that a ticket must be noted in the database prior to a certain time, else the reservation will be canceled so that the reservation can be resold. Removal of non-ticketed reservations of an airline removes speculative reservations or bookings from flight inventories and provides an opportunity to reserve the seat anew in the name of a ticket-buying passenger.
Simplified flight firming has previously been conducted manually especially once a flight has become extremely overbooked or during peak travel periods when overbooking is common. However, manual flight firming is a labor intensive effort which is expensive and difficult to manage. In essence, manual flight firming involves the checking visually of a printout of reservations contained in a central reservations system with each reservation being checked to determine if the reservation has been ticketed. For those reservations which have not been ticketed and which do not fit into a given set of parameters which would excuse the non-ticketing, the manual flight firmer must then contact the reservations issuing agency such as a travel agency or the like with the information that the reservation will be canceled if a ticket is not issued by a certain date. Manual follow-up is necessary in order to determine if the ticket has been issued and, if not, a second notice may be provided depending upon another set of criteria.
Ticketing time limit rules can be set by using flight number, origin, destination, booking class, departure date, booking date, passenger type code, point of sale, Frequent Flier number, global distribution system or GDS requirements, and other special instructions (OSI), messages or any combination thereof. Flexibility of this nature allows air carriers to segment very small portions of each passenger name record or PNR for specialized flight firming to allow for contract fares, wholesalers, consolidators, and numerous other special situations.
Flight firming according to the invention can be automatically carried out from a remote location. Flight firming can be continuously accomplished to enforce ticketing time limits and to maintain flight inventories free of speculative bookings, thereby resulting in lower no-show percentages, lower spoilage in revenue spill and higher onboard load factors on sold-out flights in particular. Flight firming according to the invention can also automatically remove speculative bookings made under assumed names and remove multiple bookings and the like while applying special ticketing requirements to certain accounts, reservations entities or individuals based on criteria including the amount of business previously provided for the holder of the reservation.
While the automated and remotely operable system of the present invention can be utilized other than will be explicitly described herein, it is to be understood that the present methodology and system operates particularly well for the practice of “flight firming” as will be described hereinafter.